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Saturday, 04 June 2016

As of 6:30 p.m. last night—31.5 hours in—we had sold 404 book sets, 325 of them with the bonus volume. If my very rusty arithmetical "skills" are functioning, that means 1,941 books, or just under 62 books per hour on average (150 sets in the first hour, 241 in the first 4 hours 37 minutes).

That must be some sort of record for TOP, although how you'd simplify it enough to sound vivid I wouldn't know. Whatever, the takeaway seems to be: the Museum is most likely going to run out of stock before the 30 days of the sale have passed.

So, "don't delay, order today!" :-) (I missed my calling, clearly.)

Four people that I know of have had problems ordering so far. If you do, 1) try again later; 2) try using a different browser; 3) try using a different computer; 4) call the Museum store to order over the phone. If you live in Kansas City MO, you can also show up in person at the Nelson-Atkins Museum store and give them the code and get the discount.

Here is the original post; here is the link to the offer, and the code for the discount is 175212. Thanks to everyone who has ordered so far, and I'll keep you updated as to the progress of the sale.

Mike

P.S. You're welcome to pass the information along to other friends or other online communities you participate in.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Thursday, 02 June 2016

As promised, in cooperation with the Nelson-Atkins Museum, TOP is today offering a package of four wonderful older photobooks by eminent curator and author Keith F. Davis for a single low price. Here's the link—to get the sale price exclusive to TOP, enter the code 175212.

The booksFor $48 plus shipping, you'll receive four of Keith's books:

Clarence John Laughlin: Visionary Photographer (1990)

Todd Webb: Photographs of New York and Paris 1945–1960 (1986)

George N. Barnard: Photographer of the Sherman Campaign (1990)

The Photographs of Dorothea Lange (1995)

In addition, the first several hundred orders will receive, as a free bonus:

The Passionate Observer: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten (1993)

Three strong winsAll these books enjoyed successful runs in print, and at this point what Keith and the Museum are trying to do is put the remaining books in the hands of people who will enjoy and appreciate them. And TOP gets a few dollars from each sale. So this whole project is a win/win/win for them, me, and you.

Details

Supply: We have fewer books than last time, but still a good supply, so you won't miss out if you can't order immediately. However only the first several hundred orders will receive the fifth title, and there's a caveat regarding hardcover and softcover that I've explained several times and will explain again below.

Shipping: Domestic shipping is $15.95. Overseas shipping is available but expensive at $100. There's no help for this; books are heavy, and four (or five) books are heavier than one. Do note that the cost even with international shipping is still lower than the price the Museum has been selling these books for regularly, and lower than the cover prices of the books when they were new back in the 1990s. (They'd cost more if published now.) So, still not a bad deal.

Packaging: Last time we got some complaints about the packaging (although we had few actual problems), so this time the books will be wrapped in bubble wrap and encased in a stout lidded box for shipping. Big thanks to Brian and the corps of Museum volunteers who will be working hard on the shipping fulfillment!

The books themselves: I'll be posting more about each book in the days/weeks to come. The Barnard is the definitive title on him and a must-have for anyone interested in the Civil War; the Lange is (in my opinion) the best single-volume overview of her career, "the one to have if you have only one"; and my surprise favorite is the Laughlin, which I knew from when it was new but have really only appreciated for the first time since my sample copy arrived here this Spring. He's not a straight photographer, so it's possible his moment is here right now.

Note that Keith Davis is very, very good (gifted, I think, and I'm pretty good at it too) at the basic bedrock task of curation: picking which pictures to show, and in what sequence. There's a "rightness" to these presentations that accentuates the pleasure of looking at these books.

Duration: The sale lasts for one month or while supplies last.

Value and varying interest: My feeling, having seen and happily perused all the books is that this is a nice buy if you're interested in at least two of the titles. And you might find, like I did, that you'll be surprised by one or more of the others, too, and like it more than you thought, so there's that possibility too.

Hardcover/paperback: One book exists only in hardcover, two others (including the bonus book) only in soft, but for two of the books there's a mixed supply of hardcover and softcover copies. We'll fulfill orders with hardcovers until they run out and then start sending softcovers. There's nothing wrong with a paperback book but hardcovers are kinda nice too. The one you really want in hardcover is the Lange, and that's all the Museum has, so that's what you'll get, for sure.

Not a secret: The sale isn't a secret, so feel free to post the link and order code to other photographic communities you frequent.

A lot of people at the Museum have worked hard on this, so big thanks to them! And thanks to all of you who ordered the book from our last cooperative book sale, too. The success of that sale inspired this one.

Mike(Thanks most of all to Keith, who, although a down-to-earth sort of guy, is firmly ensconced in the pantheon of the medium's greatest curators.)

[UPDATE 3:37 p.m. Thursday: 241 sets sold so far, and 325 is the cutoff for the free fifth book.]

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Massoud biniaz: "Hi Mike, How do you know if you're going to receive the bonus book?"

Mike replies: You'll only know when your box comes.

The reason it's provided for free is so they wouldn't have to work out a mechanism to track it. If they were set up to tell you in advance whether you were going to get it it, they'd also be set up to charge extra for it.

Lenya: "Mike, why don't you revive the Photography book of the month club, so that members get a photography book chosen by you and a publisher at a discounted price every month or every two months? That would open some of our horizons, without breaking the bank. The Weston volume, and other books you had on sale may have built just enough trust in the TOP editor's taste to make this endeavor possible."

Saturday, 28 May 2016

Our next book sale in cooperation with the Nelson-Atkins Museum will begin Thursday, June 2, at 11 am Eastern U.S. Time.

We will be offering four brand new photography books that are "new old stock" (NOS) and have been in storage at the Museum. The price for all four is $48.

The first 325 orders will receive an extra book (i.e., different title) for free. This is the only way we could handle the fact that we have fewer copies of that book, while still offering the whole package for one price.

Speaking of the "package," responding to concerns last time about the packaging, this time the books will be wrapped in bubble wrap inside a stout box.

Two of the other books exist in varying proportions of hardcover/softcover. We will fulfill the orders with hardcover books until they run out, then switch to softcover.

International shipping will be possible, but very expensive. There's no help for this: photo books are big and heavy and the Museum does not do a lot of international shipping generally and thus doesn't enjoy economies of scale for that shipping. So the books won't be such a "deal" for our international readers but at least the books will be available to you if you really want them. Even with international shipping, the price will still be below what the Museum normally charges for these books and below the cumulative original selling prices.

The sale will run for one month or while supplies last. We have fewer copies than last time, but still enough that you won't miss out entirely if you don't order immediately.

A small portion of the each sale goes to TOP, so you're helping support this site with your purchase.

More information next Thursday at 11—please check back then!

(And hope you have a nice Saturday.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Wednesday, 25 May 2016

We're getting close to the announcement of the next book sale. Early orders will receive an extra title for free, and with two of the titles we will fulfill the orders with hardcovers first and softcovers when the hardcovers run out. So there are several good reasons to order early.

Just a heads up if you've been waiting for it. I expect we'll be ready to go in the next few days.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Friday, 29 April 2016

One of the great classic books of American landscape photography has just been reprinted: Robert Adams's fine, iconoclastic '70s exploration of the Front Range, The New West.

The New West , subtitled Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range, was foundational for the New Topographics movement, and it marked (as well as anything) a fundamental change for American photography of landscape in general and of the West in particular: if Ansel Adams was in essence the last of the great 19th-century landscapists, echoing their heroic treatment of the West-as-wilderness, pristine, untrammeled and exotic, Robert Adams (no relation) was an early standout among younger generations of photographers who were taking a more jaundiced, documentary look at how land in the West was actually being used.

...Yet few love the land more than Robert Adams, who has written eloquently on the subject in short, epigrammatic essays and books such as Beauty In Photography and Why People Photograph, which I think are crucial companions to photographic books such as The New West, From the Missouri West, and the scarifying Los Angeles Spring. Robert Adams, who is a fine writer and has won both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur "genius grant," is in a sense American photography's counterpart to Wendell Berry.

Photograph by Robert Adams

Maybe a book will be written in the future comparing and contrasting those two Adamses, Ansel and Robert. Both were (are, in the case of Robert, who was born in 1937 and is now 78) environmentalists. But their approach to that is diametrically opposite—Ansel celebrates the land as it supposedly was when unpopulated or very sparsely populated (although the hand of man can still be seen in many such photographs by people who know what they are looking for), and Robert's work is in part a sustained cry of anguish at what has been done to the land through poor stewardship and exploitation; he accepts the presence of mankind everywhere and the banality of many of the elements we've imposed on the land, while at the same time always remaining conscious of the essential dignity of the landscape.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Scott Symes: "I'll second your statement about how nice a book it is. I had mine on order for months and then just a couple of weeks ago it was finally released and shipped. The foreword by John Szarkowski sets it up perfectly for the reader/viewer. Highly recommended and a bargain at $27 on Amazon."

Tom Frost: "There has been one book looking at both Adamses: Reinventing the West, by Allison Kemmerer, 2002, Addison Gallery. It's still available at Amazon. I have a copy on my bookshelf."

Brian Adams: "For an appreciation of this photographer, I suggest you read "Robert Adams—What We Bought: The New World" by Tod Papageorge, from his book Core Curriculum published by Aperture in 2011. —Brian Adams (no relation to Ansel, Robert or Bryan!)"

Kenneth Tanaka: "Thanks for the heads-up, Mike! Although I'm on a book-buying moratorium this is one that I've long wanted but not yet bought...until now! Aside: The charming little film "How to Make a Book With Steidl" features a segment of Gerhard visiting Robert Adams and his wife in their home. It's a lovely segment that suggested what a gentle but very sharp fellow Adams is. Perhaps they were planning this edition at the time."

Franz Josef: "Re 'AA was photographing in the tradition of the 19th-cent landscapists, especially Carleton Watkins,' which Mike wrote in the Comments section—I don't think Stieglitz would agree. He saw Adams as a 20th Century 'modernist' right in line with Strand and Steichen. Carleton Watkins, O'Sullivan, etc. were more akin to journalists covering the discovery and marvel of the Western landscape. Perhaps you're associating their large view cameras with a shared outlook but I think Adams was a modernist working with very sharp and literal elements in abstract form."

Huw Morgan: "Mike, I tune in every day because you are such a good writer, but there are some posts where you really shine. This is one of them. I love the comparison between Ansel and Robert and your analysis is superb."

Ash: "Thanks for letting me know about this book. The images strike a chord with me because I grew up Longmont, Colorado, a front range town that grew from a population of 43,000 in 1980 to over 86,000 people today. When my copy arrives it should trigger a mixed emotional response like Adams designed it to do."

John McMillin: "As a resident of the Front Range megalopolis, I can tell you this—lazy, banal and uninspiring architecture is abundant here. And what's worse, you see everything coming form a long way off, and there's not many trees to hide the mediocrity."

Eric Perlberg: "Tyler Green does a very high quality weekly podcast interviewing contemporary artists and curators. A few weeks ago he spoke at length with Robert Adams."

Michel Hardy-Vallée: "In addition to The New West and What We Bought, aficionados must get denver (all lowercase) which is published by Yale University Art Gallery, and forms with the other two a trilogy of some kind. Whenever someone asks me the perennial tip for avoiding shooting telephone poles or electric wires in a picture, I refer them to Robert Adams, who found brilliant ways of looking at them."

Sunday, 24 April 2016

I had a nice vacation. My brother, his wife, and their daughter, my niece, came to visit. It was lovely having them here. But it's a long drive for them.

It mostly rained; naturally. Because when one person takes an unscheduled vacation and a family drives seven hours, it has to rain. The Universe has laws. We all expected it, and nobody was surprised. We ended up mainly just hanging around here.

A few updates:

Anders Petersen book: Have you ever bought a photobook you're just not in the mood for? I received Anders Petersen the other day and I have good news and bad news. The good news is that it's a richly produced book of superbly seen photographs and would be more than a safe buy for anyone interested in the photographer—more likely a must-buy, I would guess. The bad news is that I wasn't in the mood.

It's full of pictures with a particular aesthetic slant: like an unending rain, page after page offers up a grimy, gritty, "unflinching," peering-into-the darkness-with-flash, seamy-underside-of-life look. You know, dead animals, damaged or strange-looking people, pubic hair, tattoos, stark carnality and the frailty and transience of the flesh. The "ugly is cool" and chaos-is-rampant kind of outlook on life that for a long time was much beloved of certain kinds of European magazines.

I had a somewhat dyspeptic subjective reaction.

...Which of course is no fault of the photography. I've definitely appreciated that kind of work in the past, and I'm not averse to it—in many ways it's much more interesting than the kind of photographic sensibility that just goes out and mines the visual world for scenic clichés and fests of color. It has grabbed me at times and I'm not immune to its power.

With a whole beautifully-produced book of this kind of work on my lap, though, Petersen's sensibility struck me (most likely unfairly) as an affectation. I'm sure it's only because a Petersen photograph was used as the cover of the Tom Waits album "Rain Dogs," but his photography struck me the same way Waits' music does—not only noirish because that's the way reality happens to be, but because noir is cool. I mean, c'mon, Tom Waits is a successful musician...I'm sure he could afford a nice tidy three-bedroom tract house in the suburbs and a new mid-level SUV if that's what he wanted. At some point, pork-pie hats, soul patches, and gravelly-voiced songs about low-lifes becomes a choice, doesn't it?

It's a good book: I'm just not "into" its worldview at the moment. So I've put the book on the shelf until its time is ripe; there, it will await future delectation, at some point in time when I can fully resonate with the particular strings it plucks.

Tom Burke

The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming! Er, well, one came, anyway. Just this afternoon TOP reader Tom Burke came by for a coffee from Sheffield, in the UK. He lives on the very southernmost border of Yorkshire. He's the first reader to visit TOP Rural Headquarters in 2016 and the first ever, I believe, from Old Blimey. Tom is thoughtful, exceedingly well-informed, articulate, and soft-spoken—which I believe is the only kind of humans they grow in the UK. (It's possible my experience of them is somewhat limited. As we know, all TOP readers are well above average.) He has flagrantly good taste in photography blogs, having been a faithful reader since the early days of "The Sunday Morning Photographer" on Luminous-Landscape.

Tom, who retired a year ago, is in America "swanning around," and he said those of you who are British would know what that means. He left his wife at home—she still works. He brought as a gift a book by Denis Thorpe, for no other reason than he thought Denis is a photographer I should know about. That was nice.

Mid-Priced? Pah: As a P.S.: Remember how numerous readers objected to my characterization of the $3k+ VPI Classic turntable as "mid-priced" in a previous "Open Mike"? Take an inside look at how U-Turn turntables are made, mostly by hand, right here in 'Murrica—Woburn, Massachusetts to be precise. Here's a loaded version—at the expensive end of the range.

You (in chorus): Is that all?

Of course not. More soon!

Mike(Thanks to Tom)

"Open Mike" is the editorial page of TOP. It appears on Sundays.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Stan B.: "I also found the book overwhelming, but for different reasons—though I'd still highly recommend it. Petersen's prints are uniformly contrasty in nature with dramatic, domineering blacks, and most face each other in this book like competing crescendos in a symphony—they're all high drama without a moment's rest to catch one's breath. It's all high notes with little ebb and flow, and after a while, one begins to feel bludgeoned by the sheer intensity and impact of his photos—good as they are! The book has a plethora of images, and it's pure insanity to try and take them in all in one sitting. There's more than enough there for several essays, several books, several lifetimes...."

Mike Plews: "Thanks for the U-turn link. These turntables are both pretty and very reasonably priced. They remind me of the old AR XA turntables, simple and elegant. Made me smile."

robert e: "I'm not convinced that even successful musicians these days could afford the suburban SUV lifestyle. Someone like Beyonce, sure; Tom Waits—a name most people won't recognize—I'm less sure. But your point is taken—he's been too comfortable for too long to write and sing convincingly about the low life. And I'm dismayed that I agree with you, because I also agree with you that the characterization is likely superficial and unfair."

Maggie Osterberg: "Re: 'I mean, c'mon, Tom Waits is a successful musician...I'm sure he could afford a nice tidy three-bedroom tract house in the suburbs and a new mid-level SUV if that's what he wanted. At some point, pork-pie hats, soul patches, and gravelly-voiced songs about low-lifes becomes a choice, doesn't it?' You've made the mistake of confusing the artist with the artist's work. I mean, Joel Sartore doesn't live in a zoo or in a lodge built of sticks in the middle of an Amazon tributary, just because he photographs animals. And there's this weird fetish surrounding 'authenticity' with songwriters and musicians that other writers don't have to deal with. No one bags on a novelist that she has a teaching position at a university, even though her books are about growing up in the [insert non-academic setting of your choice here]. Stephen Speilberg is neither a horse, nor was he a soldier in The Great War, yet, he made a picture called 'War Horse' and no one complained about his lifestyle. Tom Waits and his wife, who is also his working and songwriting partner, probably have a lovely house together, where they dream up all the wonderful songs and theatre that goes into Waits' shows."

Tuesday, 05 April 2016

Happy to report that systems are all "go" for our next photobook sale with the Nelson-Atkins Museum. The last one was a huge success, with just shy of 1,000 copies of An American Century of Photography by Keith F. Davis sold at a very nice price.

That was four tons of books, by the way.

The next sale will be quite different. We'll be offering a package of four outstanding books, together, for one price. And sorry to keep harping on this, but the price really is exceptionally low for what you'll be getting—it's a tremendous bargain by virtually anyone's definition.

Again, these are older but very high-quality photobooks that the museum has in storage. All are brand new. Naturally I'll tell you the titles and describe all the books before the sale starts. One is by far the definitive book on its subject, of especial interest to Civil War buffs and valued highly on the secondary market. Another is a superb sampling of the work of a woman who Keith calls "one of the absolute giants of photography"—a very pretty, well-made book, a great book to have if you only have one of hers.

And neither of those is even my favorite.

Putting together the package is a bit complex. There aren't as many copies of these books as there were with the first one. So the number of packages sold will be the number of whichever book the Museum has the least of. In one case—a fifth book—there are far fewer copies available than there are of the other four—hundreds less. The Museum just doesn't want to mess with the complexity that would be created by charging for that one, so that book will be added as a free bonus to about the first 250 orders.

There was little chance we were going to sell out of the first book we offered, although apparently we came close to doing that. This time I think it's likely that we will sell out.

Hard and softOne more complication, and yet one more reason to order early:

In the case of one book, all the copies are softcover. In another, all the copies are hardcover. But with the other two, the books exist in both hardcover and softcover. The printed matter inside is exactly the same in both cases—same paper, same printing quality—so people who get the softcovers won't miss out on any content. But with both of those titles, there are different numbers of hardcovers available. So what will happen is that orders will be fulfilled in the order they're received, and all orders will be fulfilled with hardcovers until they run out, at which time we'll switch over to the softcover copies.

So what I'm saying is that you might get five or four books, and you might get three, two, or one in hardcover.

These books are good enough (I have all five right here in my office right now), and price low enough, that even if you end up with four books and three of the four are softcovers, it's still very well worth the small amount you'll be paying. Nobody loses. But early birds will get a bit extra.

For that reason, I'll be giving you plenty of advance notice about exactly when the sale will start. Right now we're looking at about four weeks out. But I'll keep you updated, and as soon as we get a date certain and a time I'll let you know.

TwitI'm a twit about things like social media, but as I said yesterday, I'm making a strong effort to Tweet alerts to new posts, and I'll also Tweet just before the beginning of the sale, four weeks from now, so those who follow @TheOnlinePhotog will get an instant alert.

The last book sale with the Nelson-Atkins Museum was a lot of fun. You'll like the next one too.

Mike(Thanks to Keith)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Monday, 04 April 2016

Seems like the entire photo world—or that subset of it that cares about pictures, anyway—is talking about Teju Cole's article "A Too-Perfect Picture" at the New York Times Magazine. In reviewing Steve McCurry's new book, India, Cole calls McCurry to task not just for taking pictures that "are staged or shot to look as if they were" and that are "astonishingly boring"—his charge goes a little deeper than that. He argues that McCurry is invested in an imaginary, idealized India, a land mainly of Western stereotype. "To consider a place largely from the perspective of a permanent anthropological past, to settle on a notion of authenticity that edits out the present day, is not simply to present an alternative truth: It is to indulge in fantasy." That's a more serious charge than boringness when it's aimed at a guy who's spent a large part of his life as a photojournalist.

Teju Cole contrasts McCurry's work to that of the late Raghubir Singh—taking care to address the apparent political correctness of his choice (the liberal idea that disenfranchised, disadvantaged, and third-world people should control their own image, rather than leaving it to Western white males). No fool he. In fact, though, it's a great comparison from a purely artistic standpoint. I've loved Singh's work since I first saw it in a Washington, D.C. museum 25 years ago, but I like Steve McCurry's work too. But the contrast between the two both as artists and in terms of the way each conceives both of photographs and of the subject—and the way they tend to like to organize pictures—is indeed very instructive. Seeing how they handle the same subject brings up some core issues in how different minds and eyes approach the photographic venture.

I don't think you need to be familiar with a broader subset of the work of both photographers to see Cole's point clearly. It's a short but trenchant article, as close to a must-read for photography enthusiasts as any such article I've come across recently. Both photographers are worth investigating, especially together, and—Cole is right—especially considering their differences.

Although Cole's language is contentious and confrontational (or maybe not—maybe he just really thinks McCurry's work is boring), I'm not really sure the issue has to become a standard "controversy," in that I don't think there's really any need to "take sides" to get a lot out of the comparison and the discussion. However, Allen Murabayashi has written a post "In Defense of Steve McCurry" at PhotoShelter.

Good to keep uppermost in mind, though—photography's not a contest, and taking one photographer down never serves to build another up. Differences are interesting. It's a big house, of many rooms.

Mike(Thanks to many readers)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Want to be notified when new posts go up? Follow @TheOnlinePhotog on Twitter.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Richard Hall: "I first went to India when i was 19 in 1971. I married an Indian woman in 1981 and have lived and worked in the region on and off for 40 years. My pictures represent what I see. Of course, not on contract. Arguments about who has a right to capture a vision are a hopeless wag."

Alan Carmody: "It is interesting to note that there has long been a tradition of great photographers traveling to India, and of great Indian photographers simultaneously creating great work on their home turf. Felice Beato's photography from India in the 19th century is famous. Raja Deendayal's photography in India from that century is equally extraordinary. So, the Steve McCurry/Raghubir Singh dichotomy has a long history. India inspires photographers, both local and visiting. And speaking of Raghubir Singh, I'm partial to his contemporary and equal, Raghu Rai. If you view the work of one, you must check out the work of the other.

"Lastly, as to Teju Cole's argument, I agree with it in regards to McCurry specifically.

"I've always had misgivings about McCurry's approach after reading about how he went about re-discovering Sharbat Gula in mid-life, the subject of the famous 'Afghan Girl' teen portrait that he took in a refugee camp. When McCurry did finally track down a likely candidate, a lady in mid-life living in near poverty, he aggressively and intrusively had a U.S. team do a laser scan of her retina rather than believe the evidence of his own eyes and the lady's story that she was the girl he had photographed. Kinda crass and cold and, I daresay, a behavior he would never exhibit within the confines of his own society.

"On the other hand, I don't necessarily buy any all-encompassing theory of the 'Western Gaze' in regards to all outsider photography in India, specifically. India has too large and vibrant a press (3,000 newspapers and magazines in the English language alone) to worry about what pictures outsiders are taking of it. I do think that distortion exists in the case of reportage from Africa, but it is arises from a complex interaction of photographer, photo editors, media and news-story needs and preferences and so on, rather than the methods and mindset of any individual photographer, as in the case of McCurry."

BERND REINHARDT: "I practice quite a bit of street photography, but my late mentor Ben Lifson used to refer to it as 'figures in landscape.' A lot of my peers like to focus on the homeless and the plight of society, which when done respectfully is a noble undertaking. I myself like to focus on the beauty in this world, rich or poor. My photography is subjective. I am not a photojournalist. I am not saying that this is the way to go for everyone; it's just what I like to do with my photography, and it seems that I share this objective with Steve McCurry and Peter Turnley. What's wrong with showing the beautiful side of a place, a person, or a situation? There is so much sorrow in this world that I don't feel the need to dunk everyone's nose in it. That's what why we have the news."

JK: "While McCurry might be one of the best known and most successful, Cole's critique can certainly be extended to other globe-trotting Western photographers. That's something that often stuck me about the 'A Day in the Life' series of books, especially when they went to less developed countries. The fly-in-fly-out photographers, relying on their visual instincts and no doubt certain preconceptions, tended to come up with striking images that, to my mind, seldom went very deep. The local photographers' contributions, while usually not as immediately impressive, were more likely to offer clues about what life was really like in those places. At their best, the two styles complemented each other quite nicely. I think that a more specific criticism of McCurry would be that most of his best work came early, and that he seems to have been coasting for some years now. By all accounts he does set up or at least direct a lot of his shots, and that always runs the risk of falling into formula."

Victor Bloomfield: "This controversy is remarkably similar to the one involving the portrayal by Edward S. Curtis of 'The North American Indian' in his monumental volumes of photographs of that name. The Portland (Oregon) Art Museum is currently featuring the exhibit 'Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy: Zig Jackson, Wendy Red Star, Will Wilson,' which contrasts Curtis's work with that of three contemporary Native American photographers. The exhibition's web site says, in part: 'Curtis, a non-Native who believed that Native Americans were a "vanishing race," produced a meaningful yet romanticized record of tribal life at the turn of the twentieth century. The photographs he included in The North American Indian document significant aspects of daily life and material culture and encourage nostalgia for societies under threat of elimination. This beautiful but often idealized representation of Native culture has elicited both praise and scrutiny, as many photographs were posed and manipulated in order to eliminate signs of modern life and create the artifice of a pre-European snapshot in time.'"

Mattias: "as ever you offer the balanced view of things photographic. Thank you for that. Instead of taking sides I will say just this though. I have great respect for Cole as a maturing critic. Previously mostly known as a celebrated writer of fiction he has moved steadily, through his column at the New York Times Magazine, into this new role over just a few years. He also offers a sligthly different viewpoint than what is often the case among established critics in the West, which is refreshing and much needed. In addition to Murabayashi's defence of McCurry I also appreciate the well-written defence of Cole by Andrew Molitor (in PhotoShelter's comment section) which I tend to agree with."

Shubh Mohan: "It is basically the same critique that Edward Said made in orientalism. What is important is Steve McCurry is immensely popular because his work is easily likable for many people. That should not make him any less of an artist even though his work may come across as boring or easy to some people. At least it is more accessible, and the photographic community should be thankful for that."

SR: "Raghubir Singh was born in Rajasthan, probably the most photographed and stereotyped region of India. That may partly explain why his images lack the romanticism of the so called western stereotype—he had broken the spell of exotic veneer that charms most visitors to India.

"Having said that I must confess that India seems exotic to Indians themselves. Every morning, Lakshmi, the elephant, walks down my street on her way to temple duty, and in the evenings a small crowd gathers at the corner temple which specializes in the removal or charms and spells cast on children (which makes them sick and cranky). Last week marked the conclusion of a festival where young men suspend themselves from a crane with sharp hooks inserted in their backs, in a trance induced by the pain. How can I not photograph that?

"The everyday existence is so full of color and ritual that it is extremely difficult not to be captivated by it as a photographer. So the western stereotype is hardly western—a lot of Indians produce similar images.

"I have found that the best way is not to resist it. I given in to the exotic charm of my country, photograph the color, pomp, ceremony and sadhus to my heart’s content and eventually if I hang around the place long enough (and this could be days), I do come to a stage that I am no longer distracted and am able to look deeper, past the surface charm. Then India’s most unusual and outlandish affairs reveal themselves to be nothing more (or nothing less) than humanity’s universal preoccupations."

Roger Bradbury: "I'm not impressed by Teju Cole's piece on Steve McCurry. I think it's a load of old nonsense; Cole doesn't like the view of India he sees through McCurry's work because it isn't the view he would like the world to see. Well, tough.

"There's no misrepresentation to be seen here. the example Cole gives of the two railwaymen on the front of an engine shows me two men at work, one of whom Cole tells us has a beard just as I do, though my beard is bigger. It shows that the transport infrastructure runs close to the Taj Mahal, a World Heritage Site, just like the transport infrastructure runs close to some World Heritage Sites in the U.K. It isn't a fantasy view of the place, but how it is in real life.

"'Astonishingly boring' is an oxymoron, and if Mr. McCurry's photos were that boring, why does he have well over a million followers? I should be so lucky, except it's not luck but years of effort that made this happen.

"Steve McCurry's Afghan Girl photo, together with the photo of the woman she became 17 years later, makes me think about what it means to grow and age. With these two photos, the whole is greater than the sum.

"As far as I can see, Steve McCurry treats his subjects with dignity. Here is McCurry's website. See what you think."

Bill Poole: "I agree with much of the Times piece and particularly like the phrase, applied to one of Singh's images: 'unforgettable because it stretches compositional coherence nearly to its snapping point.' There are so many, many pretty pictures in the world—billions more every day. The struggle is to use familiar graphic 'materials' to say something new without stretching coherence beyond the snapping point."

Piers Smith: "To Sam Abell, who also worked at National Geographic, the issue of excluding too much in the search of the perfect photograph seems to have been a serious concern. In his book The Photographic Life, he mentions this in the context of when he was photographing the American West. He said how he eventually had to stop 'overlooking' real life, i.e. excluding the mundane in the search for an image good enough to be published in the magazine. One can understand the tendency to do this with the kind of pressure these guys must have been under.

Animesh Ray: "Raghubir Singh's photographs have always seemed to me to be quite cerebral, as opposed to McCurry's photos, which appear rather sensual in comparison. They are just two aspects of art. While I gravitate to Singh (I am an Indian) and more so to Rai, some of McCurry's photos from India are unforgettable, such as the cluster of women sheltering themselves against a dust storm, or a boatman in Kashmir's Dahl lake. These lyrical masterpieces constitute a small number of McCurry's output from India. I am struck by the far more numerous compelling images from Henri Cartier-Bresson in India, though he was there for little over a year (I think)."

Thursday, 03 March 2016

I almost forgot! A lot of people have been adding comments to the older posts and contacting me directly, so I thought I'd raise this flag here so we can keep all the relevant comments in one place, accessible to all...

...Did you get your book? And so what do you think?

There are still almost 200 copies left. Anyone who wants one can get half off by going to this link and then adding the code 19333 in the "Promotional Code" box on the left of the screen at checkout.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

David Elesh: "Mike, I believe I ordered on Feb. 15. My credit card was charged on the 17th. I am still waiting to receive the book."

David Elesh: "Correction! It arrived moments after I wrote my post."

Mike replies: Synchronicity....

Larry Wilkins: "Hi Mike, I have not received the book yet. Should I be worried?"

Mike replies: No. Not yet.

Amend that: never be worried. Because if it doesn't arrive, for any reason, we'll send another one. You'll get it one way or another, sooner or later. So, no, don't be worried.

Burple: "I received my book and, wow! It's the first photography book I've ever purchased. I am delighted with it. What a bargain. Thanks for the recommendation and the opportunity, Mike!"

Mike replies: First one? Congratulations! That's a nice cornerstone for a new library.

You should thank Keith, the author, too. This offer was his idea originally.

Paul Metcalf: "Got mine, and currently on page 43. Incredible research. Question: there's a reference to a companion volume that covers the time period of photography prior to this volume. Does this exist and who/what/when/where, etc.?"

Mike replies: It's called The Origins of American Photography: From Daguerreotype to Dry-Plate, 1839–1885. I can't say much yet, but you might want to hold off buying that one for just a little while longer.

Joe Holmes: "I got mine, and the photo reproductions are terrific, but even better, the text is really well-written (as you said it would be, Mike). I've started at the last chapter, since that's what I'm most interested in, and I'm learning a lot about topics I thought I already knew. What a terrific resource."

Thursday, 25 February 2016

So the last book sale from our friend Keith F. Davis and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City has gone absolutely swimmingly.

(And that book, An American Century of Photography for only $32.50, is still available, by the way—here's the link, then enter 19333 in the "Promotion Code" box at checkout to get 50% off. For all international orders, please see this post. TOP readers have bought 900+ copies so far and there should still be 250 or so left).

News!And I've just spoken to Keith and gotten some of the details of the next sale.

That one will take place probably in early April (possibly late March), and will feature four books in one package, again for a very (very) low price. As with the American Century book, they're looking to both reduce stock in their warehouse but, equally, to put the books in the hands of people who will truly appreciate them. All four books had successful runs at full price, so the Museum's pricing is designed so that they simply don't lose money getting the books to you.

Of course there are somewhat varying amounts of each title available. Therefore, two of the books earmarked for the next sale are softbound, one is hardcover, but the fourth will transition from hardcover to softcover as the sale proceeds—earlier buyers will receive the hardcover, until the supply runs out, and then the Museum Store will start filling orders with the softcover edition of the same book. The earliest buyers will receive an extra book, too—a different title—as a free premium. The reason is that there are not as many copies of that book available, so it can't be part of the package with the rest.

As with this sale, there are enough copies that you won't miss out if you miss the day of the announcement.

Staff and helpers packing and labeling copies of An American Centuryof Photography to ship to TOP readers

I'm happy to say that everyone involved in the previous sale has been delighted at the fabulous response. This has truly been a win-all-around proposition, and, if you bought a copy of An American Century of Photography, as you'll soon see, you've won too.

And there might well be a third sale after the next one, too, although more negotiations have to be completed before we'll know for sure.

Naturally, I'll keep you well apprised about all of this as we go along.

Mike(Thanks again to Keith for the opportunity to be a part of this)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Friday, 19 February 2016

Okay, here's how to order An American Century of Photography from countries other than the U.S.

The Museum Store is not set up to accept non-U.S. orders online. So if you'd like to order a book, please email the store at store@nelson-atkins.org and provide your name, country, and address including postal code. They'll calculate shipping charges, and if you're still interested, you can work out with them how to pay.

Just to prevent confusion: this post pertains to FOREIGN ORDERS ONLY. If you're in the United States, you can purchase a copy of the book for half price by visiting the sale page and entering 19333 in the box labeled "Promotional Code" on the left hand side of the checkout page.

Mind you, the shipping charges are likely to be high. It's a Museum Store in the middle of the continental United States. Ninety-nine percent of its sales take place inside the Museum itself. They don't commonly get orders from foreign countries, they don't do a lot of shipping, and they don't have volume arrangements with shippers. The cost will be just as high as if you were to take a 9–10 lbs. (4–4.5 kilo) package to your local shipper and have it sent to Missouri, plus handling.

I have my doubts as to whether this will be practical and cost-effective. But we'd like to do whatever we can to accommodate all our readers, no matter where they live. I hope this does that.

About 800 copies of the book have been ordered so far, and there should be about 400 left. As I mentioned before, the Store staff is working overtime, but it's going to take them a while to get all the books shipped—it's a big task. Your patience is appreciated!

Mike

P.S. To answer an earlier question, yes, if you live in Kansas City, Missouri, you can go to the Museum Store at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in person and ask for a discount by mentioning The Online Photographer and using the coupon code 19333.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Samuli: "One option is to use packet forwarding services that are available in the US. I have used www.shipito.com few times in order to get stuff to Finland from US Amazon or some other webshop that doesn't ship outside US. The forwarding costs are reasonable and often cheaper than using what is available otherwise."

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

This has been fun. The book sale has gone awesomely/brilliantly so far. We'd taken orders for 649 books as of 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday.

As you can probably understand, this presents the Museum Store at the Nelson-Atkins with an unusual challenge! Like any museum store, 99% of the business they do is on-site...that is, in the actual Museum itself. They're not set up for large amounts of online orders or for lots of shipping. So they're asking for your patience—they're going to be working overtime to get all the orders fulfilled and the books out the door, but it might take a little longer than you expect for your book to get to you. Both the Museum Store staff and I are standing by to help with any problems, so you will get your book, don't worry. Certainly if you haven't gotten yours by the Ides of March (Spellcheck changed that to "Ideas of March"—no, Spellcheck), you should contact us.

To give you an idea how unusual this is for them, they have to hire a rental truck to get the books from the storage facility to the shipping area!

There are still lots of copies left. But...well, no one knows exactly how many. It seems the boxes are not all in one place, so they're not easy to count. Plenty, though.

Non-US ordersNow then, as far as international shipping is concerned: if online sales are a tiny fraction of the store's ordinary business, international sales are a tiny fraction of that. Normally how they do it is just handle each order individually and calculate actual shipping depending on your address. But that's going to be tough if there are, say, 200 or 300 orders. They're going to bend over backwards to try to accommodate international orders, but they need a couple of days to work out the details. So I'll have an update for you about that at about this time Thursday afternoon. Don't worry, there will still be books available, they'll make sure of that.

I have to warn you, it might cost a lot. It's a heavy book and shipping is expensive. It's just a reality of the big round world—electrons go zipping around the globe with nary a care, but getting a weighty stack of paper to do the same thing takes more doing.

If you haven't ordered yet and would like to, here's the link, and the "Promotional Code" to enter at checkout to get 50% off is 19333.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Monday, 15 February 2016

Today I'm happy to be able to offer a fine deal on a great photography book, just for you. Keith F. Davis's An American Century of Photography: From Dry Plate to Digital is the best single-volume history of 20th-century American photography, in my opinion. It covers the century-plus from the mid-1880s (when American photography really came into its own) to the late 1990s.

It first came out in 1995 to widespread praise, and quickly sold out. Rather than just run off another batch, the 1999 Second Edition was revised extensively and increased in size more than 50%, with many illustrations added, and a larger press run was made. For a book of this type the production values are top notch in every way: a solid binding, very good paper, and excellent reproduction quality.

The original publication price was $95, more than fair for such a hefty slab of book with production values of such high standards. I've seen a lot less book sell for $100 and more over the years. As it's gotten further from its publication date, the book was discounted to $65, which is the lowest it has ever sold for until right this minute.

But after 17 years, well established as a success, the book is now ending its run. The Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, is clearing out the remaining inventory, and has offered exclusively to TOP (that's where you are now, The Online Photographer) the opportunity to sell hardcover copies of An American Century of Photography for one month for half price, only $32.50. A small amount of the proceeds go to support TOP. The books are new and pristine and will be shipped from the Museum.

The shipping cost of $15.95 then seems high proportionate to the cost of the book, but as you'll see, it's a great big book—588 pages on premium paper stock, almost two inches thick, and 7.8 pounds. Not cheap to ship.

That's why, unfortunately, we can only ship to the USA for now. We're going to work on international shipping and I'll update you if there's movement on that front.

There are enough books available that everyone who wants one should be able to get one. There might even be enough copies to last for the 30 days of the sale. However, the number of copies available is limited—and when they're gone, that's it.

About the bookThe classic scholarly photography book was traditionally organized as a written essay of generous length, often with smaller illustrations interspersed, followed by a section of "plates," or full-sized illustrations. This was because, in earlier eras of printing, the printing of illustrations often required a different process and sometimes different paper. But it proved to be a robust and sensible organizing principle for photo books. An American Century is essentially four such books in one: "A Reluctant Modernism, 1885–1915," "Abstraction and Realism, 1915–1940," "From Public to Private Concerns, 1940–1965," and "The Image Transformed, 1965–Present." Each written section is followed by a generous selection of pictures, presented in oversize format, one to a page (no running over the gutter), each with an appropriate border of white space.

One result is that you can fully enjoy the book just as a picture book, even without reading a word. The Nelson-Atkins is the home of the Hallmark Photographic Collection, formerly one of the earliest and largest corporate photography collections in the world. Keith Davis is not only one of the finest authors in the U.S. writing about photography today—he's a gifted curator with a great eye. (You might remember that we featured his book The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker in 2012 (now out of print and selling for $195 and up), and more recently his Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath was our Book of the Year for 2015.) He told me that in selecting the illustrations for this book, he tried to leaven familiar masterworks with a generous assortment of lesser-known pictures that might be new to readers of the book. The effect is just right—you "land" every few pages on a familiar "friend," so to speak, but there's a rich lode of astutely chosen less familiar works as well, to add discovery and surprise to the mix.

You'll probably digest it as pictures-only at first, and it's pretty enjoyable that way.

'Tis a great whacking slab of a tome, big and heavy, 9.8 x 12.2 inches

But I hope you won't overlook the text. It took Keith six years of research and writing—and that's with the kind of help that a major museum curator can call upon. I'm finding the book physically somewhat demanding to read—the combination of the large, heavy size of the book and the small type is tough to handle—I have an antique book stand that's helping. But the text is fascinating, a fine panoramic overview with lots of thoughtful (and thought-provoking) touches. I'll give you a sample a few days from now.

A book stand is helping

Enough for now. I hope you'll like this—it's a work on its subject that is unlikely to be surpassed until the history of the past 21 years has settled a lot more. A core title for a the educational and reference shelves of your library, and a book that's rich enough and deep enough to repay whatever level of attention you care to give it. I think you will like.

Again, to order, go to the book page, add it to your cart, and enter 19333 in the "Promotional Code" box to get half off. This sale will go till March 15th or until the last of the books are gone.

A big thanks to Keith and all the fine people who are involved in this at the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

Mike

UPDATE Mon. 1:30:The Museum Store is getting a large number of orders. They'd like me to announce that shipping won't begin until Thursday of this week (the books have to be retrieved), and "Orders will be processed in the order received." —M. the Ed.]

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Roberto Alonso Lago: "Very nice Mike. You've been teasing us about this until I'm chomping at the bit, only to casually mention today that only US orders can be fulfilled. Argh! If you suffer any back pains today, it's me and my voodoo doll. :-) "

Mike replies: LOL! Ouch.

They're going to work on it, really. It might not be till later in the week, but I will alert you as soon as possible.

Steve G: "My order was in by 8:20 am Pacific time. As a side note, that book stand looks nifty. Are they available or is that a one-off or a garage sale find, etc?"

Mike replies: That one's an antique—family heirloom—but here's something very similar, a little smaller but close in size, for not very much money. If that doesn't suit, search for "cookbook holder" or "Bible stand" to find alternatives. Quite useful actually.

Michel: "PHEW! Despite all your assurances to the contrary I was afraid the book would be gone in no time. I fully intended to come by TOP at or near 11 a.m. but I forgot. When I remembered I just scrolled until I saw the link, clicked and purchased. Now I can go back and read the post and find out what this book is about ;-) Thank you Mike."

hugh crawford: "I have not heard of the book but Charles Sheeler's photograph of the Ford plant on the cover is pretty canny. If you needed to pick a single photograph to illustrate the intersections (yeah, I know) of art and commerce, of painting and photography, of the precise inflection point of the transformation to an industrial culture, and a foreshadowing of Bernd and Hilla Becher and the whole Dusseldorf School, Charles Sheeler's River Rouge photo would be a pretty good choice. Or it could illustrate the obliteration of nature and its replacement by suburbs and the rise of the charcoal briquette. It's one of my favorite photographs."

Mark Sampson: "I just showed this post to my wife (the photo conservator/historian in our house) and she said 'let's get it!' So we have."

Mike replies: Sounds like a nice household.

Malcolm Leader: "I can't thank you enough. I saw this book in the '90s but was really too poor at the time to justify buying and I've regretted it ever since. I admit, I basically forgot about it until now. Can't wait to look through this at length. Thank you again."

Frank Greenagel: "I purchased the first edition when it came out in 1995 and your description is entirely accurate—excellent paper, printing and binding. I especially appreciated the many fresh images there, and hope/expect the new edition will have more."

Sunday, 14 February 2016

Winter's here!Lovely Winter has finally (finally) arrived in Western New York. It's a crispy –9°F (–23°C) this morning, cold enough to make short-coated Lulu want to stay indoors. I'm wearing a base layer (formerly known as long underwear) and flannel-lined jeans, and I've got my HeatHoldersTM on!

Took long enough. I enjoy a good crispy cold—it's bracing. It's that wet, chilly, hovering-around-thirty-degrees cold that feels unpleasant to me. Went outside five times yesterday. Just not for too long each time!

Bad news about the hat, though. (I asked about a warm winter hat a few weeks ago.) Based on readers' recommendations I bought six hats and have now zero-degree tested them all, and the hands-down winner is the Golightly cashmere watch cap recommended by my brother Scott, whose advice is commonly right on target. (Good thing, because he gives advice for a living—he's a Ph.D. psychologist in Rhode Island.) Sorry to recommend such a flagrantly expensive product, but it's both the most comfortable and the warmest of the hats I tried. Should last a long time at least—multiple reports (including from Scott) say they still look brand new after ten years of use. Just don't lose it.

Panasonic apparently let retailers fill the orders from existing stocks and said it would honor rebates on backorders, but has kept shuffling its feet about filling those backorders, delaying the ship dates multiple times. B&H Photo for one finally gave up when Panasonic delayed the shipments yet again, this time till April. B&H's Henry Posner (an old friend from CompuServe) stated the company has "no confidence" either that Panasonic will ship the lenses in April or that it would ship enough of them. So they finally pulled the plug and cancelled the backorders.

This appears to be industry-wide, not specific to B&H or any other retailer.

Panasonic has historically been intermittently plagued by problems when it comes to keeping its photographic products in stock. To name two examples, I recall a loooong wait for the Panasonic LX3 when it was a hot item eight years ago, and I watched the Panasonic 12–35mm premium zoom (a great Micro 4/3 lens) go into extended periods of limbo more than once.

Happy Birthday DDDThe redoubtable David Douglas Duncan, one of the 20th century's greatest war photographers, turned 100 last January 23rd. Duncan (a.k.a. DDD)—who, when just a college student, inadvertently photographed an incognito John Dillinger entering a hotel—is revered at Nikon for his crucial early support of the then-fledgling company, and he had a long tenure as one of the top mentors and role models for photo enthusiasts. Late in life he had a falling out with his longtime friend Henri Cartier-Bresson for publishing a book of pictures he and Henri took of each other at a café—Cartier-Bresson was notoriously averse to being photographed.

One of the treasures of my photo library is a copy of David's War Without Heroes, his superb book about Viet Nam (thanks to my book dealer friend Andy Moursund for helping with that acquisition). DDD is due for a new career retrospective book, too. Happy Birthday, David.

How to buy a pool tableWhen we were talking about the lottery several weeks ago, a couple of people asked me what kind of pool table I'd buy if I won the lottery. As you know I never write about pool, but I'd probably pick a 9-foot Blatt New Yorker, which is a modern reproduction of the old "streamline" style Brunswick Centennial. (Streamline is a later offshoot of art deco.) Costs around $30,000, I think—I haven't actually priced it, for the obvious reason that I haven't won the lottery.

But for most people furnishing a game room, for kids, teens, parties, and weekender "ball-bashing," what you want is something like a 7-foot Brunswick Glenwood. Not cheap, but the table is pretty, it can be customized to your taste, and the pockets, as on all Brunswicks save the tournament models, are buckets—they'll suck down any ball that comes near 'em. This is not good for practice or for getting better, but it's better for having occasional fun without getting frustrated.

Long the dominant brand, Brunswick tables are no longer the best—all made offshore* now—but the famous name still holds sway, and every dollar you save buying a cheaper table you'll lose twice over when you go to sell.

The Brunswick Glenwood

Now comes the hard part: for heaven's sake, get the kids a lesson or two. In golf, the tradition of instruction is very strong—only an idiot would set kids on a golf course, hand them a few clubs, and turn them loose and let them have at it on their own. Everybody takes a few lessons. In any kind of billiards, it's the opposite. Not only is there no tradition of instruction, there is a tradition against it—hustlers were always trying to hide their "speed" (how good they were) and nobody wanted to teach anybody else what they knew for fear of giving away a competitive advantage. The result is that everybody flails away on a pool table any old which way, and nobody learns the proper stance or the proper way to stroke. (Even many pros have grooved a bad stroke, including the player widely agreed to be the most talented of the last era, the Filipino Efren Reyes. He copied his stroke from an old man who happened to be the best player in the small out-of-the-way town in the Philippines where Efren grew up. It's a poor one, loosey-goosey and too quick. Efren himself has said he has no idea how good he could have been if only he'd learned a better stroke. Sadly, there was a talented kid at my pool hall in Milwaukee who had copied his stroke from Efren's! That nameless Filipino player's untutored stroke has infected pool players across generations and across continents.) Widespread ignorance of how to play properly has adversely affected the popularity of the game.

How do you find lessons? You almost can't. Your best bet is this DVD set or this book. Good in-person instructors are very few and far between.

Free online photo course from MoMALast news item for this Sunday—the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has launched a free online course called "Seeing Through Photographs." Curator Sarah Meister "encourages participants to look critically at photographs through the diverse ideas, approaches, and technologies that inform their making." Haven't seen any of it yet, so this isn't necessarily an endorsement—I'm just passing the news along.

Come back tomorrow at 11 a.m. ET for a nice book offer, exclusively here on TOP! Hope you have a nice rest of your Sunday.

Mike(Thanks to Scott Johnston, Richard Newman, Ctein, and Ken Tanaka)

"Open Mike" is the Editorial Page of TOP. It often strays off-topic and usually comes along on Sundays.

*American-made tables include Connelly in Texas; A.E. Schmidt in St. Louis, Missouri, a company I like; Golden West in Oregon; and, in Indiana, Diamond, the prevailing manufacturer of tables used at professional tournaments. (And Olhausen, but stay away from Olhausens. In my opinion they play horribly.) There's a brand of table called American Heritage. Now where do you suppose those are made? Asia, of course. With a name like that, how could they be made anywhere else?

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

R. Edelman: "In lieu of a new David Douglas Duncan career retrospective, I would suggest Photo Nomad, published in 2003. As DDD wrote, the book was 'my birthday gift to myself.' Happy birthday, Mr. Duncan!"

Mike replies: Whoops, forgot about that one. I've skimmed but not perused it.

Moose: "Yup, got my cancellation notice for the Panny 25mm ƒ/1.7 a couple of days ago, and a nice, if frustrated, reply when I asked what was going on:

We accepted your order with every intention of filling it. We could not have anticipated that Panasonic would become unable (or otherwise decline) to fill the orders we had placed with them for this lens. We share your disappointment and surprise at their decision.

"But as I live where I don't have to buy a $155 hat, I now feel better about popping for an Oly refurb. I think that the lens I wanted anyway, and was blinded by the deal. I looked at the reviews again, and at Robin Wong's practical examples that the Oly, in spite of similar specs, can get much closer/magnify more, which is a big deal to me."

Ken James: "Another good post, you are on a winning streak (usually are). I was apparently one of the lucky ones to get the Panasonic lens, I have kept it on my OM-D E-M10 since it arrived. I was surprised at how much more I like the camera with this lens on the front. I love it."

sara j: "In 1968, I skipped out of school with a friend and we went to the The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. I came upon an exhibit of David Douglas Duncan photos and stayed there for several hours, mesmerized. The next day, I walked into the journalism room and said that I needed to learn photography."

Friday, 12 February 2016

Okay, I got a little carried away with the Book Offer post two days ago. No skulls; no cobwebs.

I just really like this kind of thing, is all. I love books—they're an essential component of my enjoyment of photography and its culture—and it's fun to be able to share such a lovely thing at a nice price.

Monday's book is a photo history reference book. And it's a beaut, a premium production in every way. It was very expensive when new. The current price at the Museum is one-third less than it was on publication, which is already very fair...and we'll be offering brand new, pristine and perfect hardcovers for half that. The Bookstore Manager told me, "I can guarantee that we will NEVER sell the book for less." The sale will go on for one month or until they run out of books, whichever comes first.

It is nearly two inches thick, weighs close to eight pounds, and runs almost 600 pages. Lavish, plentitudinous illustrations, very astutely chosen, very nicely reproduced.

I'll tell you all about it on Monday. If you're not going to be near a computer Monday, I don't think you need to worry; I don't think they can sell out in one day. I guess I can't guarantee that. But I really don't think they possibly can...can they? No, I don't think so. Maybe. Possibly. But probably not. I think you're safe. I'm pretty sure.

More anon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Wednesday, 10 February 2016

...So, to recap: a major art museum in the American Midwest discovered a rich cache of new copies of old books, lovingly packed in oaken casks in pristine excelsior, way down in the labyrinthine underground catacombs beneath the museum building where hardly anyone ever goes—you know, with all the skulls and cobwebs*. It has (exclusively!) offered the books to TOP to offer (exclusively!) to YOU.

There are a limited number of copies available.

There are, I think, seven titles in all. To start with we'll be offering one title only. But it's a showstopper, a masterpiece—a fabulous and wonderful, deeply engaging, educational and highly tasty book that, I can all but guarantee, no lover of photography will be sorry to own or want to be without. And more to the point it's going to be incredibly unbelievably unprecedentedly cheap. In the talks leading up to this, I suggested a very low price. So the museum had a meeting, discussed the matter, mulled it over at great length, and...decided on an even lower price.

I need to emphasize this: There are a limited number of copies available.

(All the details will be revealed on Monday.)

Runaway giveawayReally, this amounts to a giveaway.

It almost is. Basically, the book was already a good success, and they don't need to make money or recoup investment from the few remaining copies. Rather, they want the last copies of the book to go to the right people...people who will appreciate and enjoy them.

That's you again; you're getting that?

I'm getting very excited about this. The more time I spend with this book, the more I've been loving it. It took the author six years to write. All I can say is that he must have a lot of energy and be a very hard worker, to get all this done in a mere six years.

There is a decent supply, so it isn't the sort of think you can blink and miss. The thing is, though, we just never know how these things are going to go.

So you want to be alert here. Come back on Monday. (I'll try to give you the exact time in advance. We're still working out the last details.) You might decide not to get this, but, take my word, you want to give yourself the chance to decide.

Mike

*Do I exaggerate? Possibly, but I like to believe that all museums have catacombs full of treasure beneath them.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Sunday, 31 January 2016

A cheerful plug—this is not objective or disinterested, because I love this book (I own a print from it), and Peter is a good friend, and Peter paid me generously to help publicize the book when it first came out. (It was a big success, thanks in part to me, and by "me" I mean you.) But—French Kiss is the perfect Valentine's Day gift. If you already own the book, you can probably attest to that. And if you order before the end of the day on Tuesday you can get it in time for Valentine's Day on the 14th. (International orders might not arrive in time.)

This is the print I own from French Kiss. This would be a greatshot even without the cat.

There are five hundred copies left of the second (and probably last) printing. It's a really nice book, suffused with a lighthearted spirit of romance and the affection that passes between lovers and friends. The book was made to be a gift, with a stout and handsome red cloth slipcase. If one friend doesn't like it, another will. Can't lose.

The real dealOn a different subject, what do you think the chances are of this?

This isn't a setup, this was a real deal, with a well-shuffled deck, dealing in rows from left to right. I once had my arithmetical skills derided by no less an eminence than Daniel Boorstin, celebrated historian and author and the Librarian of Congress at the time, and I doubt I could calculate the chances of one ace showing in a game of Klondike, much less all four, still less the chance of all four showing in a row. By the way, the idea of having to take a statistics class is a component ingredient in my idea of hell. I've never taken a statistics class—I only know just enough about it to know that it would torture me. Anyway, after some hard thought about my lack of mathematical aptitude and my ignorance of statistics, I've concluded that, in all mathematical likelihood, it's going to be a long time before I see this again.

Good Sunday to you. Gordon Lewis's thoughts about the new Olympus Pen-F on the morrow.

Mike

[UPDATE: As Gerry pointed out in the Comments, I should have said probability, not statistics. My bad. —MJ]

"Open Mike" is the Editor's page of TOP and is often off-topic or personal in some way. It appears on Sundays.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Patrick Perez: "I gave my copy to my girlfriend for Valentines Day two years ago. But now she's my wife so I still get to see the book."

Duncan: "Here's my back of the envelope calculation for the probability of getting four aces in a row. It is .000014775, or 1 chance in 67,681.25 deals of the cards. So unless you play Klondike something like 2,000 times a year (assuming you've got another 35 years left), it's unlikely you'll ever see this again. If you want the gory calculation details, let me know and I'll send them along."

John Camp: "You're a smart guy, so you probably don't lack an aptitude for math, but probably probably lack an interest in it. When I took ninth grade algebra, I got a C, and was lucky to get it—when my father pushed me on it, I told him that nothing I would ever do in my life would require me to know algebra. I was wrong about that, but something interesting happened in demonstrating my wrongness. When I was a newspaper reporter, I was packed off to a special intensive class at Northwestern to study statistics and probability and polling; I did quite well, because everything I studied had a practical application. Twenty years later, when I was involved in archaeology in the Middle East, I took a community college course in surveying, which included trig. I did quite well in trig, because again, it had a demonstrable relationship to something practical. So math without a demonstrable application was hard to me—but with an application, not really a problem. I suspect there's some math involved in lens calculations, and you're a lens guy. Does that math defeat you?"

Mike replies: In my very earliest exposure to arithmetic, I was quite put out by numbers because no one would tell me what. That is, when they said "what's two plus two?", my response was "two what?" It seemed obvious to my childish brain that "two" means "...of a kind," and you can't add two of one kind to two of another kind. For example, two sheep plus two sheep is four sheep, but two sheep plus two oranges is still two pairs of things and not four sheep or four oranges, and two sheep plus two days is not four of anything.

Elisabeth Spector: "Hmmm...my back-of-the-envelope calculation gives 1/67,659 (admittedly with some rounding error)—similar to Duncan's result. So, did you win the game with this auspicious start?"

Mike replies: I play Klondike allowing only two single-card-turn passes through the deck, so clearances are rare, but, yes, this one scored a 52.

Yonatan Katznelson: "The back of my envelope agrees with the back of Duncan's envelope. Explanation (even though you didn't ask, and which you can ignore): To deal the pictured Klondike hand the four aces have to be in positions 8, 14, 19 and 23 of your well-shuffled deck. There are three other sets of four positions in the deck for the four aces that result in seeing them displayed in a row like that—so four total 'good' ways of positioning the aces in the deck so they come out in a row. There are 270,725 (52C4) possible placements for the aces in the deck, so the probability of seeing 4 in a row like that is 4/270,725 ~ 0.000014775."

Rube Redfield: "Statistics has nothing to do with math (neither does Sudoku), but everything to do with probability. I teach statistics (along with a basic 'learn your digital camera' course) at university in Japan and I am sure you would love it. I do it in a computer lab; the computer does all the math, everything is hands on, and the graphics are both beautiful and instantaneous. All you have to do is learn how to interpret them."

mao: "Given that you have two sets of answers from your readers, and you claim to be bad at math, what are the odds that you picked the right one for the Featured Comments? My reading of the problem agrees with the low probability camp, but to achieve better agreement on answers you receive, you may need to improve you skill at writing math problems ;-) "

Mike replies: ...Which deficiency certainly stands to reason. Also my lack of concern about discrepancies in the answer.

For the record, the problem, I think, is four aces next to each other but in any order of suits and anywhere in the array (four possible positions). Reason? Well, I dunno. But I think the fact that they were all in a row increased my sense of wonder at the occurrence, whereas I don't think I would have been any less amazed if the row of four was in any different position in the array (i.e., all the way to the right or all the way to the left or with two other cards to the left of the aces instead of one). Which is a totally subjective and impressionistic reason for formulating a probability problem, but then, the only college-level math course I ever took was called "Math for Poets."

Wednesday, 27 January 2016

Just a pre- pre-warning to stay alert for the book deal I told you about a while back—the first installment is coming up, I would guess within the next month or so although I can't say for sure (it's not in my hands). It's for a limited supply of a wonderful out-of-print book now in the possession of a major museum. I think it's fair to say it's the best one-volume treatment that currently exists on its subject. I learned yesterday that it took six years of hard work to write. Which is amazing, although completely believable.

You won't need to be hair-trigger this time—the first offering won't sell out in hours; it should stay available for some number of days at least. But there's a limited supply, and there won't be any more once they're gone. (As in: never.) I'll give you as much warning as I can so you can consider it and say yea or nay while there's still a chance to actually snag the thing.

The price will be quite a bit more advantageous than my best hope, turns out. It amounts almost to a giveaway. (They set the price.) They want the books to land in the right hands...they want the remaining copies to go to photographers and enthusiasts who will appreciate the book. I.e., you.

I'll have more soon, and will give you as much advance warning as possible.

The offer will be exclusive to TOP, I'm pleased to say, so TOP readers will get first crack at this opportunity.

As another follow-up, I should mention that the hardcover catalog from the Alvin Langdon Coburn show is top-flight in every way. I got mine yesterday. I was remiss in not mentioning that the show was sponsored by Fundacion Mapfre in Madrid, Spain, and was first shown there. The catalog was printed in Madrid.

The problem is, everybody's out of it already. The Museum is out, Amazon is out, the Book Depository is out. There are still a few copies from third-party sellers on Amazon (although the price has already doubled) and Amazon UK has two copies left. I can't call the publisher to check on the book's status because they're in Spain. [See Update below —Ed.]

It must have sold better than expected throughout the two showings of the exhibit, in Spain and here—because certainly it should be the standard work on Coburn for years to come. It will be a shame if it has indeed gone out of print already. Pamela Glasson Roberts' biography and critical appraisal is outstanding; the illustrations are well done and highly readable even if they don't convey the magic of the original prints (Coburn was deeply immersed in photogravure printing, considering it the only way to adequately reproduce platinum and gum bichromate prints); and I appreciated Anne Cartier-Bresson's "Technical Atlas." A stout, handsome volume I'm very pleased to have and do plan to read.

And would recommend...if it were available. It would be nice if there were to be another printing to keep it available for some decent stretch into the future, but with the show over with and not planning to travel further, it seems unlikely.

Mike

[UPDATE: Amazon is now saying the book will be back in stock on Sunday. —MJ]

[UPDATE #2: From Pam Roberts: "I am still working on a biography of Coburn. My essay in the Coburn catalogue above is a small percentage of my research so far. Research is ever more fascinating these days given the amazing amount now online when all sorts of oddities come up." Quote unearthed from the British Photographic History website. —MJ]

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Thursday, 21 January 2016

Landscape/nature is by most accounts the second most popular photographic genre, after people and portraits. It’s a boundless field that rewards any level of participation, from offhand snapshots to week-long wilderness treks with a heavy pack of gear. The range of books on the subject reflects this great diversity. If you’re starting from scratch, almost any book on the subject will have something to teach you, and there are many general titles out there, some much more helpful than others. As you delve more deeply into photographing the natural world, your interests will evolve and mature, focusing on what most appeals to you.

Like many landscape/nature hobbyists who started in the film era, I learned much of the craft from John Shaw’s classic 1984 title, Nature Photographer's Complete Guide to Professional Field Techniques. The combination of technical knowledge, crystal-clear exposition, spare prose and lovely photos was magical. A completely new edition in 2000 was somehow a bit less magical. Obviously a lot has changed in photography since the turn of the millennium. New this year is John Shaw's Guide to Digital Nature Photography, and it’s a worthy addition to your bookshelf if you’re getting started in landscape/nature photography, or if you want a single compact reference. The book is a bit smaller than 8x10", with a water-resistant cover that’s more durable than most paperbacks. Shaw’s writing is admirably clear, concise and straightforward. The opening chapter on gear is refreshingly skeptical on the value of buying more stuff versus learning how to use what you have, yet still provides clear guidance on necessary camera/system features, tripods, filters and flash equipment. There’s an excellent review of optimizing your camera’s menu settings, from exposure to autofocus to recording and viewfinder options, for outdoor subjects including wildlife and landscapes. It bears noting that Shaw’s discussion of gear is notably DSLR-centric, making no mention of mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras.

The second chapter explores exposure and metering, with a very clear explanation of the interaction between aperture/shutter speed/ISO, and the virtues of various exposure modes. The discussion may seem a bit involved when it’s so easy to take a shot, look at the LCD and histogram and adjust as needed, but the importance of aperture choice to the look of the resulting image is properly emphasized. The intent is to get the photograph you really want, not leave it up to the camera.

Subsequent chapters are equally lucid. Shaw’s discussion of lenses and how they influence the photograph is a model of clarity and concision. His review of the pros and cons of various long lens choices for landscape and wildlife subjects is spot-on. So is his explanation of the often misunderstood relationship between focal length, subject distance, and depth of field. And his discussion of the less than obvious nuts 'n' bolts of getting accurate focus is worth the price of admission all by itself.

The last few chapters address composition and graphic design, closeup/macro photography, and field craft. My only complaint is that each of these chapters, though well written and concise, warrants a more extended treatment. The discussion of post-capture processing is less than perfunctory. Another 30 pages or so would have yielded an even more useful reference.

Illustrated throughout with John Shaw’s poetic photographs, this book leaves you wanting more.

Experienced landscape/nature photographers may not find a lot of new revelations here, but it’s probably the best all-around reference guide in print, especially if you’re just starting to explore the subject.

There are many different facets to landscape photography and a correspondingly wide range of conceptual frameworks to organize it. One I have found useful for my own work is the dichotomy between nominally objective, subject driven photography on one hand and more subjective, exploratory, personal and interpretive work on the other. (Think Ansel Adams versus Minor White.) There is obviously a continuum between these two poles. I often head out to catch sunrise at a speciﬁc location with a particular photograph in mind, allowing for the vagaries of weather and light. The resulting photographs can be beautiful, even spectacular; but there are generally few surprises involved. At other times I go hiking with no particular preconceived image in my head, instead marinating in the environment to see what happens. Trying to capture the ﬂavor of the experience in an image feels very diﬀerent from constructing a preconceived photograph from nature’s raw material.

Glenn Randall’s book falls solidly in the ﬁrst camp. In his introduction Randall plainly deﬁnes landscape photography as “the pursuit of visual peak experiences”. He then asserts “master the science and craft, and the art will follow”. The remainder of the book goes into explicit detail explaining the nuts and bolts of this approach.

Chapter 1 analyzes how viewing a photographic print diﬀers from viewing reality, from dynamic range to color constancy to focus, helping the reader understand how to compensate for the intrinsic limitations of the print. Chapter 2, "In Search of Extraordinary Landscapes," reviews the process of analyzing the landscape for photographic potential—for example, using software to map sunrise/moonrise against the landscape to determine where and when to be standing for a potentially dramatic photograph. Chapter 4 delves into the physics of rainbows, alpenglow and other beautiful natural light phenomena. The author highlights what he considers most poetic lighting of all: when the landscape is illuminated by predawn or post-sunset light reflecting oﬀ of overhead clouds. It’s impossible to guarantee the arrival of these unusual but lovely forms of light; but understanding what creates them at least gives you a chance to be there when they happen. This can mean showing up an hour before sunrise on multiple consecutive days for a chance at that perfect light, and still coming away empty-handed; them’s the breaks.

In the meat of the book Randall goes into great detail on the dilemma presented by the vast exposure range between sunlit sky and shadowed ground, how to capture high quality image data from both, and how to massage the resulting file into a form that overcomes the limitations of the print to create a beautiful photograph. From graduated neutral density filters to manually blending several exposures using layer masks to HDR processing, it’s all discussed in great detail.

Subsequent chapters provide rigorous discussion of stitched panoramics and the challenges of night photography, speciﬁcally capturing star trails or the Milky Way while holding detail in the landscape.

The final chapter discusses the "psychology of the compelling landscape," reviewing research from advertising and perceptual psychology exploring why certain landscape image motifs are generally more appealing to viewers than others.

Randall’s book is illustrated with many of his spectacular photographs, most from the mountains of Colorado, along with a smattering of lucid charts and diagrams. His approach to photographing the landscape may seem a bit deterministic or even "canned," but the visual impact of his photos speaks for themselves. What you do with this "toolkit" is up to you.

Guy Tal’s More Than a Rock is a very diﬀerent kind of book, approaching landscape photography from the diametrically opposite direction of Glenn Randall’s work. Rather than a set of formulas and tools, it’s a collection of essays exploring nature, artistic license, solitude, visual expression of abstract concepts and living the artist’s life. It is somewhat incidentally illustrated by some of Tal’s poetic photographs, which tend toward quiet, softly lit "zen" moments. The essays are grouped into collections titled "Art," "Craft," "Experiences," and "Meditations," but there is plenty of conceptual overlap. "Artistic Promiscuity" discusses studying the work of a wide range of artists and being open to their influence, the better to open new avenues for your own photographs. "Breadth and Depth" delves into the difference between wide and stimulating but superficial work (such as travel photography) and narrower but much deeper investigations, such as an extended exploration of your own region. Tal argues that neither approach is better nor worse, only that it may be more fruitful to choose the direction with which your personality and vision resonates. The "Explorations and Meditations" collections explore a wide range of artistic notions, from psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of "flow" (a great concept; you should look it up) to the virtues of solitary work in genuine wilderness, to the humbling perspective provided by the visual exploration of geologic time.

Nowhere does Tal mention gear, f-stops, sensor size or Photoshop. In their place is the smell of a campfire and hot coffee on a cold morning.

Physically it’s a modestly sized, durable paperback; the photo reproductions are small but very nice. I’m not a fan of the digital slab-serif typeface chosen, but it’s readable enough. Tal’s prose is admirably clear, though just a bit verbose; not as distracting as (say) Alain Briot’s baroque paragraphs.

More Than a Rock is a great read if you’ve grown beyond technique and gear discussions.

Geoff

TOP Contributing Editor Geoff Wittig is a rural family physician with interests ranging from health care quality improvement, medical informatics, and integration of health care delivery to photography and landscape painting. Photo books are a particular area of interest; he admits he has far too many for his own good.